Or you can use the search feature at the top of the Flickr page to find your topic, person or date that interests you.

Some of the newest interesting albums:

Famed socialist leader and presidential candidate Eugene Debs in DC – Debs comes to Washington, DC following his release from the Atlanta Penitentiary in 1921 where he had run for president of the U.S. and received nearly a million votes. Where did he go? Whom did he visit? Who visited with him? What did he see?

Mr. Zero – before the Yippies of Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin and ‘Pie Man’ Aron Kay who understood modern media, there was Mr. Zero who grasped the impact of the new photographic capabilities of daily newspapers. He used his theatrics to advance the interests of the unemployed in the 1910s and 20s.

While most have heard of the Bonus Army march on Washington in 1932, few have heard of the Hunger marches that occurred in 1931-32 that had as great an impact at the time and provided the impetus for the unemployment insurance system we know today.

The Celanese Strike of 1936 in far off Cumberland, Maryland produced the great communist labor leader George A. Meyers who went on to become head of the 10,000 member textile union, head of the Maryland-DC CIO and later the head of the Communist Party USA’s trade union work. Meyers, as head of the local CIO, spearheaded efforts to desegregate defense industries in the Baltimore-Washington area at the beginning of World War II.

Poor People’s March: 1968. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. planned this march to be a massive civil disobedience action that would shut down Washington, DC to demand economic justice. After his assassination, the focus was changed to a lobby effort that was doomed by the change of focus, relentless rain and lack of effective leadership. Many historians mark this as the end of the national focus of the modern civil rights movement that began with the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom in 1957.

The last major wave of lynchings in Maryland occurred in the 1930s, see images and read about these barbaric crimes that have no historical markers. And see those that stood against them.

The vintage Washington Area Spark is now online. Scroll way down your screen on the right and click on any issue for the original tabloid paper published from 1971-75.